WINTHROP, Washington -
When Ellis Fink started his firewood business, he had a chain saw, a
couple of workhorses named Salt and Pepper, and not much more.

In
2000, the U.S. Forest Service employee who lives in Winthrop, Wash.,
was looking for a way to make a little extra cash, stay active in the
outdoors and teach his three boys the value of hard work. His weekend
and evening business, called The Workhorse Company, has steadily grown
since then, mostly thanks to the equipment he has purchased over the
years.

Like many small business owners, Ellis, 47, said he would
make one major change if given a chance to start all over again. "The
best advice would be to just bite the bullet and start off automated,"
said Ellis, who lives in rural Washington state in an area that attracts
tourists in the summer but is barely accessible during the snowy
winter. "For me it was very frustrating, trying to do all that work by
hand before picking up the firewood processor and conveyor, and trying
to bundle wood without a machine."

Ellis was born and raised in
Winthrop, which is considered the gateway to the North Cascades. It is
located in a very scenic region that used to be home to a large number
of logging companies but whose numbers have dwindled significantly. He
started out cutting firewood as more of a hobby than as business. In
fact, he gave firewood away to elderly neighbors who could no longer cut
and split their own wood. He didn't sell very much until the market
started to grow, and he realized he could build his business part-time
for now and possibly reach a point later where he could do it full-time.

Before automating his operations, Ellis was producing about 40
cords of wood each fall. With a Rainier Hydraulics firewood processor
and conveyor and a Twister Industries bundling machine, he easily
tripled his production while continuing to work the same number of
hours. And he still has only three employees, his three sons ages 7, 9
and 14.

When he decided to automate his business, Ellis invested
in a Bobcat 231 excavator and a Yamaha ATV. Next came the Rainier
Hydraulics Chomper 14S firewood processor. "It's been a great machine,"
Ellis said of the Chomper, which he found while doing research on the
Internet. (Rainier has a Web site at www.chomper.net.)

Ellis was
looking for some very specific features when he chose the Rainier
Hydraulics Chomper. He wanted a machine that would work at ground level
so he could avoid the cost of buying equipment to lift and load logs
onto a live deck. "I wanted something pretty simple that could process
wood down at ground level," he said. He liked the idea of a machine that
used a shear blade instead of a circular saw or bar saw. Ellis needed a
machine that could cut the wood and split and also produce firewood
small enough to be packaged and sold in bundles and not sold as cord
wood. And he liked what he learned when he called the company directly
and explained what he was looking for.

After examining the specs
of the processor on the Rainier Hydraulics Web site and a few phone
calls to the company, "it seemed like the way to go," Ellis recalled.
"So far, I've been very, very happy."

The Rainier Hydraulics
Chomper pulls the log into the machine, sheers it to firewood length,
and then splits it. The company says it is as easy as pouring a cup of
coffee. Rainier Hydraulics says its mission is to manufacture the
simplest, least expensive, self-contained firewood processor available.
Ellis says they have succeeded in that goal.

The manually
operated firewood processor, Rainier also manufactures models with a
fully automated option, yields about two to four cords of firewood per
hour. Among its safety features is the fact that the operator can stand
clear of the machine when using the automatic production cycle. Only one
person is required to run the Chomper. The shear blade never needs
sharpening, and the cutting process generates no sawdust.

The
Chomper is portable although Ellis operates his as a stationary machine.
The splitter can be adjusted to split one log into eight pieces,
depending on the splitting head. The processor comes standard with a
hydraulic winch that feeds the log into the machine. The company says
that everything has been configured to ensure very little downtime in
operating the machine. The Chomper is available with various sized
engines, from 18 hp to 125 hp.

The next step in Ellis'
automation plan was investing in equipment to wrap the firewood into
packages. One reason why he was interested in selling bundled or
packaged firewood was that his boys could help with the bundling task.

He
shopped around and tried different machines until he found Twister
Industries, based in Mora, Minn., while surfing the Web. (Twister's Web
site is www.twisterind.biz). After a couple of phone calls, Ellis
decided to buy the Twister Firewood Wrapping System. Ellis also
purchased a Twister Industries, 24-foot, rough top belt conveyor.

The
Twister system is relatively simple. You put a small pile of wood in a
hopper, and the Twister packages the bundle with plastic wrap.

Twister
Industries offers a variety of different models that produce bundles of
firewood in various sizes. The company has models for 10-inch firewood
to 16 inches, which wraps up to 2.3 cubic feet of wood. The equipment is
calibrated at 1-inch intervals. All models can wrap firewood from 12 to
18 inches long using 10-inch or 12-inch rolls of plastic wrap.

The largest Twister can produce more than 200 bundles per hour with a small crew of workers.